Card # 9

LISTENING (7 minutes)

Task 1. Listen to the recording [T.9] ‘Chief Financial Officer’ and complete the test.

(listening - 2 minutes; time for fulfilment - 1 min., for answering -1 min.).

#		true	false
1	The CEO organizes his party in the hall of his house.
2	A large tennis court was there at the back of the house.
3	The most important quality for an executive according to the CEO is a speech.
4	The CEO asked his executives to eat all the barbecue.

Task 2. Retell the listened text (time for preparation – 2 min., time for answering -1 min.).

SPEAKING (10 minutes)

Task 1. Discuss the theme: Why is it necessary/ important for a scientist to know foreign languages?

(time for preparation – 2 min., time for answering – 2 min.).

Task 2. Speak on the given topic: ‘Different ways of traveling and the problems that arise during traveling’.

(time for preparation – 5 min., time for answering – 1 min.).

READING (9 minutes)

Task 1. Read the text (silent reading – 1 min., reading aloud – 2 min.)

Make a plan to the text (time for preparation- 1 min., time for answering- 1 min.).

Corporate culture

Corporate culture is the collective behavior of people using common corporate visions, goals, values, beliefs, habits, working language, systems, and symbols. It is interwoven with processes, technologies, learning and significant events. In addition, different individuals bring to the workplace their own uniqueness, knowledge, and ethnic culture. So, corporate culture encompasses moral, social, and behavioral norms of your organization based on the values, beliefs, attitudes, and priorities of its members. Corporate culture is the shared values and meanings that members hold in common and that are practiced by an organization’s leaders. I think that organizational and corporate culture are formal and informal.

Your corporate culture is good only if it fits its context, i.e. your business space and your business strategy. In today’s rapidly changing economy, only cultures that can help organizations anticipate and adapt to environmental change will be associated with superior performance over the long time. Research findings show that cultures that are externally oriented (e.g. risk taking, readiness to meet new challenges) tend to be more strongly associated with organizational performance than do those cultures which are bureaucratic and predominantly internally focused.

Edgar Shein describes the three levels of a corporate culture:1.Surface level: At this level, culture is both enacted and reinforced through visible appearances and behaviors, such as physical layouts, dress codes, organizational structure, company policies, procedures and programs, and attitudes. 2.Middle level: Here, culture is manifested through our beliefs and values. 3. Deepest level: At this level, culture is manifested through basic assumptions – our long-learned, automatic responses and established opinions.

Task 2. Translate the 1-st paragraph of the text (Time for preparation- 3 min., time for answering – 1).

WRITING (14 min)

Task 1. Write an essay on the topic: ‘Ten steps to help the environment’. (100 words).

(Time for preparation – 13 min. Time for answer – 1 min.)